BA Creative Arts and Cultural Industries

This course introduces selected popular music cultures of the world, examining case studies from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as diasporic and globalised styles. Each lecture will introduce: representative musical styles with their characteristic sounds, instruments and forms; the cultural contexts within which they have developed; relationships between music and global and local forces including political power structures, gender, nationalism, tourism and globalisation; the roles of musicians and those working in music industries; circumstances surrounding musical performance, recording and dissemination of music.

This module is primarily designed to introduce students who have no background in Film Studies, or in analysing cinema, to the vocabularies used to understand and analyse film language. The module will thus focus on the close reading of specific films – from the early days of cinema, just after its invention in 1895, to the present – so as to deconstruct and analyse their technical, visual, aural and spatial features. While it will be inevitable that we look at certain European and North American films – particularly when analysing ‘mainstream’ film language – we will put the emphasis on our regional film expertise to introduce students to important films from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and also the Soviet Union and Latin America.

This module introduces students to ways of writing across the arts and creative industries, teaching them to recognize and value the creativity, independent thinking, and intellectual risk-taking involved in effective academic writing. It will equip students with a necessary toolkit for writing at the university level and in their subsequent careers, with interdisciplinary and practical application in Art History, Music, Creative Arts, Film Studies and beyond.

This module introduces students to ways of writing across the arts and creative industries, teaching them to recognize and value the creativity, independent thinking, and intellectual risk-taking involved in effective academic writing. It will equip students with a necessary toolkit for writing at the university level and in their subsequent careers, with interdisciplinary and practical application in Art History, Music, Creative Arts, Film Studies and beyond.

This module introduces the scope, aims and methods of art history as a discipline from its Eurocentric origins through to contemporary approaches to art and its histories in a global era. In conjunction with Theories of Art, this module establishes the methodological and theoretical foundations for further art historical study. In Objects of Art History, approaches to objects and their histories will be explored with a focus on key concepts, such as art, artefact, style, form and media, artists and makers.

This module introduces the scope, aims and methods of art history as a discipline from its Eurocentric origins through to contemporary approaches to art and its histories in a global era. In conjunction with Theories of Art, this module establishes the methodological and theoretical foundations for further art historical study. In Objects of Art History, approaches to objects and their histories will be explored with a focus on key concepts, such as art, artefact, style, form and media, artists and makers.

This module examines a range of key art historical concepts and theories in more detail. Seminar discussions will examine how these theories, issues and concepts may be evaluated in relation to the study of Asian and African art.

A full-year module, this is a practical course on performance in four Asian and African music traditions. Available traditions may vary from year to year. Students will normally have weekly group lessons with established musicians of the respective traditions. Students are assessed by their tutors continuously throughout the sessions based on their effort and progress, yet in the last session of each block (instrument), there is a more formal assessment by the practice tutor and the module convenor.

Based around the three broad themes of Religion, Trade and Empire, this module examines a series of individual objects in context from across Asia and Africa to explore the role of material and visual culture in understanding the history of global connectivity. Each case-study will demonstrate the transmission of ideas, motifs, materials, objects and people within Asia and Africa and in interaction with Europe, over around 1500 years from the 2nd-3rd to the 18th centuries CE.

Building upon Global Arts: connected histories (to 1800)(Term 1), this module develops an understanding of the arts of Asia and Africa from the 19th century to the present, encompassing the period when many regions were impacted first by European colonialism and later by nationalist and postcolonial movements.

This course offers a historical and contemporary exploration of the important roles played by film festivals in defining, validating, exhibiting, distributing, and (increasingly) producing global cinemas. While it introduces students to the inner workings of the oldest and largest international film festivals, it takes a critical postcolonial approach to the analysis of festivals worldwide and focuses in particular on the treatment of African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American films and filmmakers on the circuit.

The course is designed to explore themes – around the emergence of the cultural industries, the commodification of art and culture and the potentialities of digital culture – that are relevant across Media, Music and Arts and Archaeology, and to bring together expertise from each department in a team-taught course. It will give students an overview of the history and scale of the global cultural industries and how they intersect with politics, the economy, and ideas of the self and of community. It will use case studies drawn from across SOAS regions to ground the course in specific examples that address transnational and localised framings.

This half-unit introduces students from across the School of Arts to key texts of post-colonial theory that deal with aesthetics and the senses. The team-taught module mixes different disciplinary approaches from Music, History of Art and Archaeology, and Media to engage key concepts in post-colonial studies.

This School of Arts unit combines curatorial training with an exploration of key debates in the theory, history and practice of curating art, music and media in a global context. The course includes a series of off-site visits in galleries and arts institutions during which students will meet curators and engage with current perspectives on curating in London. Students will study the histories and debates of curating through a close reading of seminal exhibitions, manifestos and texts, and will cover themes including collecting and display, postcolonial exhibition practice, representation and the ‘other’, curatorial initiatives in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, curating sound and music, and the use of archives and digital technologies in curating. Throughout the course, students will work on group projects to develop practical and conceptual skills for curatorial research, and will end the course by producing an exhibition proposal. The course will appeal especially to students interested in pursuing a career in the arts sector.

this module offers students the opportunity to explore how artists negotiated their place within a rapidly society, and to examine the ways in which they forged unique world views and inspired new modes of visual expression. More specifically, it covers the development of East Asian art and visual culture in the 19th-21st centuries, starting with explorations of how artists’ experience of modernism were shaped by particular regional and historical contexts.

The course will provide an introduction to histories, theories and practices of collecting, drawing on a range of Asian and African case studies. It explores different approaches to collecting across cultures and historical periods, shifting patterns of taste and connoisseurship, individual as well as institutional collecting motivations.

In this module we will explore the central debates of contemporary art through a series of thematic case studies. Students will engage with artworks, exhibitions, art criticism and art theory to gain critical understanding of the key issues and concepts of contemporary art in its global scope.

This module considers the arts of Atlantic Africa and their dispersal initially through brutal enforced migrations of the middle passage to the ongoing exchanges of the present day as encapsulated by Paul Gilroy's concept of the black Atlantic. It considers the inter-relationships between aspects of the visual arts of the region south of the Sahara, mostly through West Africa, Central Africa to South Africa and  its various multiple extensions/interactions to the new world and beyond.

This module offers a broad introduction to the visual arts in twentieth and twenty-first century Africa.  Students will engage with a range of theoretical positions to think through art historical case studies, from Pan-African festivals and anti-apartheid art, to photography and contemporary performance.

Centered on students’ work placement experiences, this module invites student to develop their understanding of cultural and creative industries and to reflect on their learning.

The module focuses upon objects that represent outstanding achievements of the arts of the Islamic lands of the pre-modern and early modern periods, within the theoretical framework of the study of objects and material culture. Artefacts in different media from different times and regions will be studied in depth, developing critical understanding and knowledge. The agency and consumption of these objects will form an integral part of the study in this module, with consideration given variably to artists, artistic practices, patrons, and/or viewers. Another important art historical aspect that may be explored is the artistic interactions between the Islamic Middle East and neighbouring cultures, including Europe, including the circulation of objects and their transculturation, to be critically discussed through a decolonising lens.

This module examines the art and culture of premodern East Asia through a range of thematic lectures, that may adopt a pan-East Asian approach or may hone in on a specific region (China, Korea or Japan). Drawing on visual material, including (but not limited to) paintings, ceramics, tomb furnishings and textiles, the module seeks to present an overview of key developments in East Asian art from early times to the 1800s. The topics considered include artists, artworks, producers, consumers, materials and design approaches.

This module aims to introduce students to the major works and movements in the history of Japanese visual culture through the examination of selected works of art dating from early times to the 1800s in relation to religious, literary, historical and social contexts. Material covered ranges from religious paintings, sculpture and architure to the secular arts, such as prints and textiles.

Concepts of place and space offer rich and multivalent points of entry for constructing connected histories of art, architecture, and cultural production across East Asia. Through exploration of conceptual notions of place and space, this module will examine memory, interaction, and art production across national and regional boundaries as realised in visual and material culture. The module enables students to develop knowledge of East Asian artistic and built environments through lectures that may take a pan-East Asian approach or may focus on a specific region (China, Korea or Japan).

South and Southeast Asia is a region of great religious and cultural diversity. This module examines aspects of the visual arts of South, Southeast Asia and/or Tibet and the Himalayas over two millennia from the 3rd century BCE to the 18th century. A core theme is the role of art, architecture and visual culture in the negotiation between cosmopolitan and local cultures, and the formation of regional, religious and political identities by rulers, patrons, artists and their communities. This cultural encounter was expressed in terms of transregional literary and court cultures (Pali, Persian, Sanskrit or Tibetan), religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam) as well as visual culture.

This module examines key themes in the study of Buddhist art, visual and material culture in South Asia, Southeast Asia and/or Tibet and the Himalayas. Central issues addressed include the figure of the ‘historical’ Buddha in theory and practice, relics, reliquaries and the stupa, and iconography, aesthetics and Buddhist imagery.

This module centres on a 3-day fieldtrip to a European city, such as Paris, Berlin or Copenhagen, during Term 2 Reading Week. The trip combines guided tours and talks with student-led presentations and independent research, and encourages students to closely engage with the sites and to encourage them to critically consider different approaches to arts and cultural heritage.

Can be taken either in one of the traditions taught at SOAS, or in another vocal or instrumental tradition of Asia and Africa (or their diaspora communities) taught by an approved teacher outside SOAS. The chosen tradition will normally be from the same geographical region as an Area Music course taken in the same or adjacent academic year.

Can be taken either in one of the traditions taught at SOAS, or in another vocal or instrumental tradition of Asia and Africa (or their diaspora communities) taught by an approved teacher outside SOAS. The chosen tradition will normally be from the same geographical region as an Area Music course taken in the same or adjacent academic year.

A practical course, taught in the Music Recording Studio (Room 439) with possible use of equipment elsewhere in the building (e.g. BGLT, G3, for concerts, workshops etc) and outside on fieldwork assignments.

This course is an introduction to current trends in the fields of ethnomusicology, critical musicology, and popular music studies, covering not only Asia and Africa (selected cultures) but also, as relevant to the theoretical themes, American and European jazz, pop and classical music.

The course is designed to pair with the other half unit course being introduced: Traditions of East Asia, which provides a more musicological overview of East Asia’s musical genres and styles, but it may be taken as a free standing unit, both by Music and other students. The lesser emphasis on musicological approaches is expected to give the course greater appeal to area studies, politics and anthropology students.

Musical Traditions of East Asia

This module introduces students to the wide variety of healing and pilgrimage rituals in Morocco today, from the Gnawa lila to hip hop festivals hosted by the monarchy, the hillula as a paradigm for saint veneration, and Andalusi music festivals that attract mass tourism from France. We consider the way the government supports musicians and religious minorities through the programming of festivals, and the way life in cities changes with the patronage of pilgrims and tourist. We also examine the relationships that Muslim custodians of Jewish cemeteries retain with their former neighbours, and the special role of Morocco as a pilgrimage site for Jews.

The Independent Study Project (ISP) in the Creative Arts is an undergraduate dissertation on an approved topic within the creative arts. The ISP gives students the opportunity to develop, implement and write up an independent research project on a topic of their choosing under the guidance of an academic supervisor.

In this module we will explore the central debates of contemporary art through a series of thematic case studies. Students will engage with artworks, exhibitions, art criticism and art theory to gain critical understanding of the key issues and concepts of contemporary art in its global scope.

This module offers a broad introduction to the visual arts in twentieth and twenty-first century Africa.  Students will engage with a range of theoretical positions to think through art historical case studies, from Pan-African festivals and anti-apartheid art, to photography and contemporary performance.

Centered on students’ work placement experiences, this module invites student to develop their understanding of cultural and creative industries and to reflect on their learning.

This module examines the art and culture of premodern East Asia through a range of thematic lectures, that may adopt a pan-East Asian approach or may hone in on a specific region (China, Korea or Japan). Drawing on visual material, including (but not limited to) paintings, ceramics, tomb furnishings and textiles, the module seeks to present an overview of key developments in East Asian art from early times to the 1800s. The topics considered include artists, artworks, producers, consumers, materials and design approaches.

This module aims to introduce students to the major works and movements in the history of Japanese visual culture through the examination of selected works of art dating from early times to the 1800s in relation to religious, literary, historical and social contexts. Material covered ranges from religious paintings, sculpture and architure to the secular arts, such as prints and textiles.

Concepts of place and space offer rich and multivalent points of entry for constructing connected histories of art, architecture, and cultural production across East Asia. Through exploration of conceptual notions of place and space, this module will examine memory, interaction, and art production across national and regional boundaries as realised in visual and material culture. The module enables students to develop knowledge of East Asian artistic and built environments through lectures that may take a pan-East Asian approach or may focus on a specific region (China, Korea or Japan).

This module examines key themes in the study of Buddhist art, visual and material culture in South Asia, Southeast Asia and/or Tibet and the Himalayas. Central issues addressed include the figure of the ‘historical’ Buddha in theory and practice, relics, reliquaries and the stupa, and iconography, aesthetics and Buddhist imagery.

This module centres on a 3-day fieldtrip to a European city, such as Paris, Berlin or Copenhagen, during Term 2 Reading Week. The trip combines guided tours and talks with student-led presentations and independent research, and encourages students to closely engage with the sites and to encourage them to critically consider different approaches to arts and cultural heritage.

this module offers students the opportunity to explore how artists negotiated their place within a rapidly society, and to examine the ways in which they forged unique world views and inspired new modes of visual expression. More specifically, it covers the development of East Asian art and visual culture in the 19th-21st centuries, starting with explorations of how artists’ experience of modernism were shaped by particular regional and historical contexts.

The course will provide an introduction to histories, theories and practices of collecting, drawing on a range of Asian and African case studies. It explores different approaches to collecting across cultures and historical periods, shifting patterns of taste and connoisseurship, individual as well as institutional collecting motivations.

This module considers the arts of Atlantic Africa and their dispersal initially through brutal enforced migrations of the middle passage to the ongoing exchanges of the present day as encapsulated by Paul Gilroy's concept of the black Atlantic. It considers the inter-relationships between aspects of the visual arts of the region south of the Sahara, mostly through West Africa, Central Africa to South Africa and  its various multiple extensions/interactions to the new world and beyond.

Centered on students’ work placement experiences, this module invites student to develop their understanding of cultural and creative industries and to reflect on their learning.

The module focuses upon objects that represent outstanding achievements of the arts of the Islamic lands of the pre-modern and early modern periods, within the theoretical framework of the study of objects and material culture. Artefacts in different media from different times and regions will be studied in depth, developing critical understanding and knowledge. The agency and consumption of these objects will form an integral part of the study in this module, with consideration given variably to artists, artistic practices, patrons, and/or viewers. Another important art historical aspect that may be explored is the artistic interactions between the Islamic Middle East and neighbouring cultures, including Europe, including the circulation of objects and their transculturation, to be critically discussed through a decolonising lens.

South and Southeast Asia is a region of great religious and cultural diversity. This module examines aspects of the visual arts of South, Southeast Asia and/or Tibet and the Himalayas over two millennia from the 3rd century BCE to the 18th century. A core theme is the role of art, architecture and visual culture in the negotiation between cosmopolitan and local cultures, and the formation of regional, religious and political identities by rulers, patrons, artists and their communities. This cultural encounter was expressed in terms of transregional literary and court cultures (Pali, Persian, Sanskrit or Tibetan), religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam) as well as visual culture.

This module centres on a 3-day fieldtrip to a European city, such as Paris, Berlin or Copenhagen, during Term 2 Reading Week. The trip combines guided tours and talks with student-led presentations and independent research, and encourages students to closely engage with the sites and to encourage them to critically consider different approaches to arts and cultural heritage.

Can be taken either in one of the traditions taught at SOAS, or in another vocal or instrumental tradition of Asia and Africa (or their diaspora communities) taught by an approved teacher outside SOAS. The chosen tradition will normally be from the same geographical region as an Area Music course taken in the same or adjacent academic year.

Can be taken either in one of the traditions taught at SOAS, or in another vocal or instrumental tradition of Asia and Africa (or their diaspora communities) taught by an approved teacher outside SOAS. The chosen tradition will normally be from the same geographical region as an Area Music course taken in the same or adjacent academic year.

A practical course, taught in the Music Recording Studio (Room 439) with possible use of equipment elsewhere in the building (e.g. BGLT, G3, for concerts, workshops etc) and outside on fieldwork assignments.

This course is an introduction to current trends in the fields of ethnomusicology, critical musicology, and popular music studies, covering not only Asia and Africa (selected cultures) but also, as relevant to the theoretical themes, American and European jazz, pop and classical music.

The course is designed to pair with the other half unit course being introduced: Traditions of East Asia, which provides a more musicological overview of East Asia’s musical genres and styles, but it may be taken as a free standing unit, both by Music and other students. The lesser emphasis on musicological approaches is expected to give the course greater appeal to area studies, politics and anthropology students.

Musical Traditions of East Asia

This module introduces students to the wide variety of healing and pilgrimage rituals in Morocco today, from the Gnawa lila to hip hop festivals hosted by the monarchy, the hillula as a paradigm for saint veneration, and Andalusi music festivals that attract mass tourism from France. We consider the way the government supports musicians and religious minorities through the programming of festivals, and the way life in cities changes with the patronage of pilgrims and tourist. We also examine the relationships that Muslim custodians of Jewish cemeteries retain with their former neighbours, and the special role of Morocco as a pilgrimage site for Jews.